Wireless transmission for local area networks (LAN) is in the meanwhile a well established technology for end users. An essential part of a local area network is a residential gateway connecting the local area network to the Internet. A mechanism for connecting wireless devices to the local area network is called Wi-Fi, which is a brand name of the Wi-Fi Alliance for devices using the IEEE 802.11 family of standards for wireless transmission. The IEEE 802.11 standards define a residential gateway as an access point and a wireless device connected to the access point is called a station. The Wi-Fi standards are defined such, that wireless devices distributed all over a home can be connected to the residential gateway without requiring any data cables. The IEEE 802.11b and 802.11g standards use the 2.4 GHZ ISM band, wherein the later developed 802.11g standard allows a data rate of up to 54 Mbit/s. A further improvement is the 802.11n standard, which can use both the 2.4 GHZ ISM band and the 5 GHZ U-NII band and which allows a theoretical data rate up of to 600 Mbit/s. A Wi-Fi network is often also called a WLAN (wireless local area network).
But the Wi-Fi technology has become victim of its own success: even though there are several non-overlapping frequency channels that can be chosen for data transmission (four in Europe, three in US), interference from neighbouring Wi-Fi devices has become a serious problem in urban areas. In addition, there are also other devices using the 2.4 GHZ ISM band, for example Bluetooth devices, microwave ovens, babyphones and others.
Therefore, in certain circumstances, the Wi-Fi connection can suffer from poor performance and even connection loss. Some of these circumstances are obvious and easy to explain to an end user. For example, if the distance between the station and the access point is too large, signal levels are low and performance will suffer. Some other of these circumstances are “invisible” and not understood by the end user, e.g. a metal grid in the ceiling or wall between a station and an access point, or interference from other Wi-Fi and non-Wi-Fi devices. In many cases, the end user is not able to diagnose the problem source and correct the issue. Even when the end user has the possibility to call a help desk, it is very difficult to diagnose Wi-Fi issues without having a specialist going on-site with special test equipment.
Troubleshooting Wi-Fi connectivity is a big challenge to operators and equipment vendors for a number of reasons:                Users don't fully understand the wireless technology and once associated, a user expects a “fixed line” stable link connectivity and bandwidth.        It is difficult to get accurate data about the time varying wireless link quality.        A large number of factors have impact on the wireless link quality, e.g. other access points, interference, hidden nodes, transmit power, receive sensitivity, which makes any partial information insufficient to diagnose problems. Therefore, information about only the access point or only the station are often insufficient.        The service provider or equipment vendor has little or no information about the building in which the Wi-Fi network is used, but the building topology is impacting the Wi-Fi network link performance.        
In-home Wi-Fi network connectivity is correspondingly one of the main Internet service provider supports costs and causes for help-desk calls. Today's focus for operators is mainly on Wi-Fi network install, associating a station with an access point. Internet service providers are therefore searching for ways to get a better understanding of the end-user's wireless environment including link quality and performance. Related to Wi-Fi performance, operators can use a remote management protocol such as Broadband Forum TR-069 protocol, which provides access to Wi-Fi parameters as defined in the Internet Gateway Device data model BBF TR-098. But the information available via TR-069 is very limited, and when an end-user calls a help-desk it can be a lengthy and expensive process to describe the home topology and issues, e.g. my access point is in room X, the wireless printer is in room Y but when it is on, my wireless device Z has limited or no connectivity. Therefore, there is a high need for Wi-Fi diagnostics tools that collect information, interpret this, and suggest a solution to an end user.
US 2010/0110921 A1 describes a method to perform pre-evaluations of multiple Wi-Fi access points and access networks. A pre-evaluation determines whether or not an access point is connected to the Internet and measures the path performance that the access network can offer between the mobile device and a pre-specified Internet host. For determination of an Internet connectivity, a procedure is described using a ping message, e.g. an ICMP echo, to ping a testing party. An evaluation software stores the ping results, e.g. response times and number of successful responses, expressed as a percentage of attempts. For determining an end-to-end path performance of the access point, ICMP ping messages are used to record the throughput and delay characteristics between a users client device and the access point under test.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,295,960 discloses a method for determining optimal or preferred configuration settings for wireless or wired network devices in order to obtain a desirable level of network performance. A site-specific network model is used with adaptive processing to perform efficient design and on-going management of network performance. The method iteratively determines overall network performance and cost, and further iterates equipment settings, locations and orientations. Real time control is provided between a site-specific software application and physical components of the network to allow to display, store, and iteratively adapt any device to constantly varying traffic and interference conditions.